Google And Yahoo! Threaten Local Advertisers
As Google and Yahoo! enter in to the local search advertising marketing, a new report from eMarketer warns local newspapers and yellow pages this is very bad news.
Last year in the US, $22 billion was spent on local advertising by small and medium businesses, a much bigger prize for Google and Yahoo! when compared to the national advertising business which grew by 174% to $2.5 billion, says eMarketer.
The report Geo-Google Threat: Search Engines Target Local Advertising says ‘the local advertising dance floor is getting crowded. Once the exclusive domain of local media, Google and Yahoo! are waltzing on to the scene with new search offerings, improving the geographic targeting capabilities of their keyword based advertising and creating new ways for local merchants to reach local consumers.’
The report shows that local paid search advertising has been largely overlooked amid the rapid rise of search advertising by larger online companies who have no geographical constraints but in fact, local advertising has ended up dwarfing them in scope and revenue.
Google and Yahoo! have recognised the opportunity in local search and are rolling out improvements to make it easier to locate local businesses and to improve the ways advertisers target local users. This could be very bad news for local newspapers and yellow pages, says eMarketer.
The text advertisement section of the report throws up further interesting points for the online advertiser. Recent research shows that many people have trained their eyes to skip over images that have the size and placement associated with online advertisements.
Text advertisements look very similar to search results, containing only text, with no flashy pictures – similar to classifieds used by newspaper websites – making them cheap and easy to create. As pop-up blocking usage continues to grow, text advertisements look set to become more popular, says eMarketer.
Google: 020 7031 3000 www.google.co.uk Yahoo!: 020 7808 4200 www.yahoo.co.uk
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